The reason to love her unique voice is just that - only one journalist working today would come up with anything close to this:

Whether Jimmy Choos, Pumas or Toms, shoes let us stand out as individuals while fitting into similarly shod social groups. The complex relationship between the social and the personal is why it’s so hard to tell much about a shoe’s owner from a photograph alone -- and why shoes are so interesting. Their meanings require, and sometimes reveal, broader cultural context. Bergstein tells the story of a Texas high school that in 1993 punished students for wearing Doc Martens, falsely assuming that the boots signaled white racism when in fact they merely reflected students’ musical taste. A shoe, says Elizabeth Semmelhack, the senior curator at the Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto, “is an accessory that can carry a lot of cultural meaning.”

The world's most famous Filipina makes an appearance in the column alongside Adam Smith, Spike Lee, and "Sex in the City." The source was a university study, as her sources usually are.

Sadly for fashionistas looking for some credibility with this important columinist, academic research does seem to be her most common source of inspiration, not products.